Using Social Media as a Relationship Building Tool

It is no secret that social media is one of the most successful marketing tools for businesses today. It can help to increase awareness, make connections, boost sales, and create a bigger digital footprint for the brand itself.

One question to be aware of when building out and executing a social media marketing plan is this: What is the goal? What would ideally be accomplished by putting this brand on these platforms?

While social media is a great place for all purposes listed above and more, if there is not a clear goal in mind as the end result, posting can feel like a shout into an empty void.

Let’s dive deeper into what social media can be great for, and how it can be executed to accomplish the goals set by the brand.

1. Relationship building
   • When using social media as a marketing tool, following and connecting with other brands in the same market can help to boost your connections with potential partners and customers.
2. Brand awareness
   • Whether a brand is just starting out or has been around for years, spreading awareness can help boost the brand. Staying in the eyes of the people who will be purchasing the goods is necessary for growth.
3. Social selling
   • Using social media to sell goods is becoming increasingly more popular, especially with younger audiences. If you are looking to boost sales through social media, there are a lot of tactics that must be in place, but social selling is one of the most important. Audiences want to be able to shop and buy directly from social media platforms. By enabling this feature, brands can increase traffic and boost online sales tremendously.
4. Boost engagement
   • Building out a posting schedule and sticking to it can be very helpful in boosting engagement for accounts and getting people to interact with the posts.
5. Measuring success
   • There are tons of ways to measure success on social media built into the platforms themselves. For example, Google and LinkedIn analytics help to show how much traction your profile and posts are receiving, how users are engaging with your content, how it has increased or decreased from previous months, and it can even indicate the demographic of your visitors. Measuring all of this can help to better your posts and build the online persona you are looking to create.

Every business needs some elements of all of these things but setting clear objectives before beginning a social media marketing plan can help businesses thrive online. Accomplishing goals feels so much better when you know what the goals are!